Saturday, December 4, 2010

Walford Manifold's WW1 Diary

I happened, by chance, to fluke upon the unfolding of an account of life on the Western Front during WW1 through the eyes of an Australian, who enlisted with a British artillery squadron (?).

Here is my attempt to anchor my following of his diary and letters home to his father and mother. Mentioned in his diary thus far are

Beuvry (A)Bethune (B)Cambrin (C), andLa Basse Road (D).

I will update this map whenever a new location is mentioned in either the diary or the letters. If you were to click where it says 'View larger map', you will be taken out of my Plumbing blog and into Google maps. Then if you were to click on the + end of the sliding bar that is down the LHS of the map, you can zoom into the map and take a closer look at the terrain.

It has occured to me that the Auchie which I added to the map is actually known today as Auchy-les-mines. I will investigate further to see if this is a name related to the Mine Point to which EWM refers in his diary entry today.

Today I have included Wingles. which is way out from their normal landscape. However, EWM noted in his journal for 6th January that 'One of our important landmarks has had a nasty knock: the left-hand chimney at Wingles has been hit and has broken off a third of the way up.' Somehow, I have this in my head as a church, but he says chimney rather than steeple.

Useful Research Sites

Candles

They are the last romantics, these candles;Upside down hearts of light tipping wax fingers,And the fingers, taken in by their own haloes,Grown milky, almost clear, like the bodies of saints.It is touching, the way they'll ignore

A whole family of prominent objectsSimply to plumb the deeps of an eyeIn its hollow of shadows, its fringe of reeds,And the owner past thirty, no beauty at all.Daylight would be more judicious,